Content for Leads

How Jason got started in content and social

Jason worked in the music industry before he decided to reinvent himself in the social space.

He tried to bring social to his music label, but they weren’t interested. So Jason quit, went back to school for training in SEO and digital marketing. He worked at a little startup called Market Tools, then Marketo and he’s now at LinkedIn.

Welcome to the Funnel by Jason Miller.

Jason talks about his time at Marketo. He led global and content marketing and did the blog and the social channels himself when he first started. It was chaos, he recalls. Jason learned very quickly how to solve other marketers’ problems and write about them, which is how he grew his blogging skills.

“It was B2B marketing, which could be quite boring,” Jason recalls. “I took what I call the George Costanza approach, where I do the exact opposite of what everybody else is doing.”

For example, if someone said to Jason that social media doesn’t work in B2B, he would do the exact opposite and prove them wrong. After a tremendous amount of trial and error to find out what worked and scaling his content efforts, Jason was successful.

When you first start building your presence, seek out thought leaders in the space. Figure out how to take their wisdom and feature it in your content. You’ll add third-party validation and keep from talking too much about yourself.

At the same time, you also get on their radar. They know you’re helping them spread the word and eventually you can find mutual benefit.

Listen to the show to learn how going to conferences helped Jason get into guest blogging.

How to create sharable content that generates leads

Jason believes we don’t need more content, we need more relevant content.

He has a concept he started at Marketo and brought over to LinkedIn called, “The Big Rock.” Basically you need to ask yourself what conversation you want to own, and then write the book on it.

Jason suggests going from thinking like a publisher to actually publishing like a publisher.

When Jason first got to LinkedIn, the question was, “How do I market on LinkedIn successfully?” Since the conversation was being owned by others, Jason decided to take it back. He wrote a 65-page book called The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn. It was everything you wanted to know about marketing on LinkedIn, written very strategically.

Jason’s “big rock” was The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn.

It was broad-reaching content gated for the purpose of collecting email addresses. It was great for lead generation, bringing people into the funnel, helping out fellow marketers and getting the word out.

Out of their one big rock piece of content (the Marketer’s Guide), they got 50 or 60 different assets: 3 webinars, 2 infographics, 2 SlideShare decks, about 15 blog posts and so on. All of the ungated assets lead back to the form and the big rock piece of content.

“The beauty is the content’s already there, you just optimize it for different channels,” Jason says. “It’s broad, evergreen, topical and helpful.”

Listen to the show to discover how Jason created his 65-page ebook so you can adapt the process for your needs.

Marketo’s Big Marketing Activity Coloring Book was designed to make marketing fun.

Jason says the idea came from the Foo Fighters’ backstage rider, which was released on The Smoking Gun a couple of years ago. Instead of faxing over a list of demands for their backstage needs, Dave Grohl put together an illustrated activity book for the people at each venue.

In addition to being available for download, Marketo printed out a physical version of the Big Marketing Activity Coloring Book, which they sent to people it featured and gave away at conferences.

At Marketo, they took a whitepaper that had 18,000 views and turned it into a self-guided visual journey. They put it on SlideShare and it got 350,000 views in 6 months. It was the same content, just packaged differently.

Jason says to use SlideShare, take pure text and put it into a visual presentation. He calls it “self-guided,” because SlideShare is rich media. You just click through, slide by slide, and tell a beautiful story with nice visuals.

Since people like to consume content in different ways, optimize and format it to meet their needs, so you don’t miss an opportunity. Jason adds that people search SlideShare for questions and inspiration, so those who are serious about their strategy should put their content there.

Listen to the show to hear more about SlideShare, including how to use lead forms.

Ways to encourage featured influencers to share the content

Although you can tag influencers in posts, Jason feels what works best is to just email or call them. Tell them you just released your ebook and thanks for the contribution. Then include a couple of sample updates, an abstract and some tweets.

Make it as easy as possible for influencers to share, since they’re very busy. They like to share good content, and the fact that they’re included should entice them even more.

Discovery of the Week

INBOX PAUSE is a really cool service that puts a big pause button on your Gmail. It stops all emails from coming in. If you want, set an auto-responder that tells people your Gmail is on pause and you’ll get back to them when you unpause. Use it to turn your Gmail off on the weekend, on vacation or for whatever reason.

Thanks to Ray Edwards for the tip.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how Inbox Pause works for you.

Other Show Mentions

Today’s show is sponsored by Social Media Marketing World 2015.

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